A nice piece by writer Louise Kennedy, author most recently of the novel Trespasses, about her garden office on LitHub, A Shed of One’s Own: Louise Kennedy on the Blissful Semi-Solitude of Her Backyard Writing Space. Here's a snippet:
Spending so much time in my shed, it’s not a surprise that things around me made their way into the books. The basket on top of the bookcase belonged to my aunt when she was a student and inspired the one the protagonist of Trespasses, Cushla Lavery, carries to school and to the Irish classes. Books that I took from the shelves appear in the book too: Jude the Obscure, The Black Prince, the poetry of Ciaran Carson. A box of family snaps gave me the idea for a short story told in photographs. And just being in the garden has helped me understand the ways in which nature can be used to convey the passage of time in fiction.
Louise also writes about her shedworking life on the Short Story Award site. Again, a brief excerpt:
I write in a shed in my garden. The previous owner was one of those people who click your back in when you put it out. She used it as a clinic. We kept surf boards and garden tools in there and cleared it out when I started writing. A couple of weeks into lockdown, my daughter made the mistake of saying she was bored, so I scored a tin of grey paint and put her up a ladder. It looks cute now. Inside, it is painted white, with a recycled paper floor from Ikea and a desk with bookshelves apparatus my sister was getting rid of. The window overlooks the compost heap and two wheelie bins, which is probably just as well; a prettier view would distract me. I work in it all year, but sometimes, in winter, mice get in and I retreat to the kitchen.
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